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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/22611019">The Monster in Skywalker Manor</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/datswatutink/pseuds/datswatutink'>datswatutink</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Star Wars Sequel Trilogy</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Beauty and the Beast, Ben Solo Needs A Hug, Ben in the military, Discussion of Violence, F/M, Foreplay, Kissing, Non-Penetrative Sex, Reylo - Freeform, Sex, Skywalker Family Drama, Undressing, brief mention of noncon touching - Freeform, explicit - Freeform, finnrose - Freeform, rather unfavorable feelings about the military, some anger and shouting, very penetrative sex</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-02-08</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-02-09</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-04-28 17:35:09</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Explicit</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>4</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>16,282</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/22611019</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/datswatutink/pseuds/datswatutink</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Rey marches up the walk, takes hold of the door knocker, and bangs it sharply three times. Nothing. She rattles the door handle. Nothing. Absurdly, she checks the address (is this the right creepy-and-probably-abandoned-Skywalker-Manor on Alderaan street?). It is. </p><p>-Or-</p><p>Rey takes a shady job to clean the old Skywalker Manor and discovers that there's something much scarier than dust and spiderwebs living there. But maybe that's not the whole story, because what kind of monster loves roses and books?</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Finn/Rose Tico, Kylo Ren &amp; Rey, Rey &amp; Ben Solo | Kylo Ren, Rey/Ben Solo, Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>26</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>114</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>For one is both and both are one in love: The Reylo Fanfiction Anthology's Valentine's Day Exchange</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Chapter 1</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><ul class="associations">
      <li>For <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/solikerez/gifts">solikerez</a>.</li>



    </ul><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>For one is both and both are one in love: The Reylo Fanfiction Anthology's Valentine's Day Exchange<br/>Gift for solikerez! Hope you enjoy it!</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p class="p1">Rey is not proud of it, but the minute Rose and Finn leave the apartment she logs back on to Craigslist and pulls up the posting they’d all been laughing at not 10 minutes ago. Her curser hovers over the 'Reply' button.</p><p class="p1"> </p>
<p></p><blockquote>
  <p class="p1">
    <em>Cleaning Crew Needed</em>
  </p>
  <p class="p1">
    <em>Help needed Monday, Wednesday, Friday. 12-5pm. Heavy cleaning. Preparing house for sale. Quiet, discrete, and hardworking team preferred. Skywalker Manor. 4883 Alderaan Ave.</em>
  </p>
</blockquote><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">There’s no way she qualifies as a cleaning crew, and there’s no way she can manage this kind of time commitment on top of her studies, but <em>oh</em> the amount they’re willing to pay, posted below the ad, it makes her heart speed up.</p><p class="p1">She could pay Finn back for the last two months of rent. She could buy some protein with her groceries so she wouldn’t feel so light-headed. She could afford her final semester of school.</p><p class="p1">And honestly, she’s curious. The Skywalker Manor is high on a hill towards the edge of town, allegedly the family home of their current senator and her former husband and son. It’s a beautiful house, though fallen deeply into disrepair. There’s a rumor that the son—dead in the war—haunts the house. Neighbors have reported banging and rattling coming from the upper floors in the night. Younger children dare each-other to run up and ring the doorbell on stormy nights.</p><p class="p1">And now it’s being fixed up for sale. She has no idea who could possibly afford it.</p><p class="p1">There’s no harm in replying, she reasons. She will be honest about who she is, and if they’re desperate enough to take her as she is, she will go clean a house. And maybe there’s a little bit of curiosity there too, but who can say that’s a bad thing?</p><p class="p1">Resolved, she fires off a quick email to the generic Craigslist posting address before showering and heading off to school.</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p2">***</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">The reply email comes that evening while she’s in class.</p><p class="p2"> </p>
<p></p><blockquote>
  <p class="p1">
    <em>March 13, 8:34pm</em>
  </p>
  <p class="p1">
    <em>Hello Ray: </em>
  </p>
  <p class="p1">
    <em>Thank you for contacting me, it is a big job for one person, but you are correct in thinking that no one else has reached out. Cleaning supplies will be provided for you, but you’ll need to wear your own protective gear. You will start this Monday at 12 with the living room, and will be paid in cash each Friday.</em>
  </p>
  <p class="p1">
    <em>B</em>
  </p>
</blockquote><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">Rey squints at the email and feels a wash of somewhat uncharitable dislike for the writer. Seriously, who signs their name “B”? And how hard would it be to scroll up <em>one inch</em> to see how her name is spelled? And shouldn’t her employer be providing her with safety gear? She considers firing back an email that says 'you know what, never mind, but stops herself, staring at that last line. '<em>paid in cash each Friday.' </em></p><p class="p1">She just can’t turn something like that down.</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p2">***</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">It doesn’t occur to her that she has no idea how she’s going to get into the house until she’s standing on the front walk, head wrapped in an old bandanna, two days later.</p><p class="p1">It’s four minutes to noon.</p><p class="p1">Is Leia Organa herself going to swoop in with her cavalcade to open the house up for her? Who is “B”? Is he (and she’s sure it’s a he) going to meet her here and give her a tour? Is she supposed to break in a window and just attack the first room she sees?</p><p class="p1">She ends up just standing perfectly still at the end of the long winding front walk and scrutinizing the house.</p><p class="p1">It’s a Victorian—off-white with peeling paint falling from every board of skinny wooden siding, and every crooked shutter. There is a wraparound porch on the second floor too, and a bird feeder hanging from the rafters below the eve. A single robin is hopping from foot to foot and plucking food out of the little door.</p><p class="p1">Rey has just focused on how strange it is for a bird feeder at an abandoned house to have bird feed in it when the upstairs window curtain twitches aside. For the most fleeting of moments, Rey has the impression of a very tall, broad person hovering just on the other side of that window, watching the bird. Then the moment is over, and the curtain is as still as the early spring afternoon.</p><p class="p1">Her heart is beating faster though. <em>Not Abandoned</em> her brain provides.</p><p class="p1">It’s noon.</p><p class="p1">
  <em>You’ll be paid in cash each Friday. </em>
</p><p class="p1">She marches up the walk, takes hold of the door knocker, and bangs it sharply three times. Nothing. She rattles the door handle. Nothing. Absurdly, she checks the address (is this the right creepy-and-probably-abandoned-Skywalker-Manor on Alderaan street?)</p><p class="p1">After a couple of minutes she wends her way around to the back of the house, and is surprised to discover that the back yard is not in disarray. There are three more bird feeders, and while the trees and bushes planted along the stately back walk are definitely overgrown, there are roses growing with the determined air of cared-for-ness.</p><p class="p1">Rey stands a few moments staring at this spectacle, and then hurries around to the back door to give it a try. If this one is locked, she’s out of here—money be damned.</p><p class="p1">The back door is not locked.</p><p class="p1">It gives easily under her hand, and swings open on creaking hinges to reveal a mud room and pantry, dimly lit by the light from the ivy-covered window there. The pantry shelves are empty and devoid of food, and the three pairs of boots lined up next to the door have a slightly disused look about them. Rey can’t help but notice that they belonged to someone with supremely large feet.</p><p class="p1">She takes a tentative step over the threshold, wincing when there’s a creak announcing her. Another step in and she can see a coat rack—a single coat hanging with dust in the folds. Another step and she’s through the kitchen door. It’s a grand old kitchen, complete with the kind of sloping cement counter that drains into a deep sink. The counters are clear of modern appliances, and everything is covered with a slight layer of dust.</p><p class="p1">Into the living room and she receives a terrible shock. Standing right next to the door, as if guarding it, is an <em>enormous</em> man, easily seven feet tall and dressed in polished black armor. Rey doesn’t get a chance to get a good look at him because she’s too busy shrieking, jumping away, and tumbling backwards over something that WASN’T THERE a moment ago.</p><p class="p1">The echo of her scream is met by the accusatory <em>mew</em> of a trodden-on ginger-haired cat, winding its way around to glare at her through the gloom.</p><p class="p1">She’s too busy gaping up at the man to pay the cat much mind though.</p><p class="p1">Only…maybe it’s not a man at all. He hasn’t moved an inch, even after her shriek, and the more her eyes adjust to the dim light, the more he actually looks…hollow.</p><p class="p1">When her heart has settled down a bit she leans forward and yes—on closer inspection it appears to be a very strange suit of armor. It’s not like any kind of medieval piece she’s familiar with seeing at the Renn Faire. It’s jet black and angular, shining slightly in the light from the window. The helmet looks like an upturned bucket, and it’s wearing a…<em>cape</em>?</p><p class="p1">There’s a creak upstairs and the cat skitters off toward the grand staircase.</p><p class="p1">“Hello?” she calls. It’s not like any possible squatters can have missed her scream.</p><p class="p1">“Hello?” she tries again. “I’m Rey? Come to clean the house?”</p><p class="p1">The echoing silence presses in against her.</p><p class="p1">She works her hand along the wall behind the looming suit of armor and finds a light switch which she hardly expects to work, and is surprised when the room is flooded with light.</p><p class="p1">It is a stunning room, and Rey is struck suddenly by a bout of longing—not necessarily to have something as grandiose as this, but at the idea of having beautiful things just for the sake of having beautiful things.</p><p class="p1">She remembers when she and Finn first moved in together; there was a plant sale at the front of the grocery store and Finn had convinced her to buy a beautiful fern despite her protests that it she couldn’t eat it, she didn’t need it.</p><p class="p1">She’d laid on her side in bed the following morning, watching the sun filter though the fens with tears leaking happily from the corners of her eyes. Beauty for the sake of beauty.</p><p class="p1">And this living room in the Skywalker Manor is nothing <em>but</em> beauty for the sake of beauty. Even tired and dusty as everything is, the beauty is evident. There’s a grand piano in the corner (she pauses to pluck out a couple of notes—any ghost in the house has definitely already heard her), a huge bay window with throw pillows in a bold gold and red pattern, and—oh–BOOKSHELVES. Bookshelves upon <em>bookshelves</em> of books.</p><p class="p1">There are books of every type: The old kind with the strong gilded spines, the mysteriously unlabeled ones, tiny paperbacks tucked on top of standing books where they could fit, leather bound journals, titles that she remembers from bestsellers going back years, children’s books, and a pile of what looks quite a lot like medieval scrolls.</p><p class="p1">She moves towards these, curious. The first one she unrolls contains line upon line of beautiful script, handwritten with what looks like ink and quill. The words loop and dip so much that it’s hard to read them at first, but as her eyes scan down the page she can tell that it’s actually a passage from Pride and Prejudice, lovingly transcribed.</p><p class="p1">Many of the other scrolls contain similar passages, ranging in quality as the writer improved their technique. Towards the bottom of the stack she finds a page unlike the others. Instead of neat tight rows of text, this one has the same two words repeated again and again, margin to margin and down each row.</p><p class="p1">
  <em>“Ben Solo Ben Solo Ben Solo Ben Solo Ben Solo Ben Solo Ben—“</em>
</p><p class="p1">She traces the name with her finger, mouthing along.</p><p class="p1">Ben Solo. The son of Leia and Han. The missing son. Lost in Iraq all those years ago, when the family had abandoned the house and split up.</p><p class="p1">Ben Solo.</p><p class="p1">The clock on the wall strikes the quarter hour and Rey jumps so violently she nearly drops the scroll.</p><p class="p1">“Shit” she mutters—she’s here to clean, not snoop. And discovering the dead son’s calligraphy practice makes her feel like she’s peeking in on a family in mourning.</p><p class="p1">The living room is more than enough work for this afternoon, and she sets about flinging the windows open and pulling down the curtains, which she drags out to the back porch and shakes violently, sneezing all the while. She fills up the old washtub she found on the porch with water, and scrubs down the windows.</p><p class="p1">Finally she runs a broom around the crown molding and up and down the walls, knocking spiders loose into her headscarf. She is momentarily (and somewhat grudgingly) appreciative of the brusk email’s insistence that she wear head coverings.</p><p class="p1">With the windows uncovered and clean, the room already looks much better, and she takes great joy in shining the mantle over the fireplace until the marble shines in the light.</p><p class="p1">It’s nearly five already, so she hauls the wash bucket back onto the porch to dump it into the weeds at the edge of the house, and stands a minute admiring the roses. It is too early in the season for them to be anywhere near full bloom, but she can tell from their little buds that they hold great promise.</p><p class="p1">When she walks back around to her car dirty but satisfied, she pauses to stare at the upstairs window for a moment, but everything is still.</p><p class="p1"> </p><p class="p1">***</p><p class="p1"> </p><p class="p1">It takes Rey all of Wednesday, Friday, and half of the following Monday to bring the living room into order.</p><p class="p1">She doesn’t see a twitch of the upstairs curtains again, but the lingering feeling that someone is up there—silent—lingers.</p><p class="p1">She is fully aware that she could just go up there and check. The cat that she saw on the first day wanders up and down the stairs, sometimes laying in the shaft of sun at the first landing. She searched for cat food in the kitchen and, finding nothing, assumes that he must come and go, catching mice and birds as he pleases.</p><p class="p1">She stays pointedly on the first floor though. She’s received several other emails from the mysterious “B”, and a wad of cash in an envelope tucked into the hand of the frightening suit of armor in the living room. Her most recent email instructed her to continue on with the kitchen, so she does.</p><p class="p1">She’s become less shy about making a racket in the last week, and has been slowly bringing things of hers to keep at the house, sometimes even schoolwork, which she does in the dying sunshine after her official work is done at 5pm.</p><p class="p1">Today she’s brought her old speaker—the kind that was popular before everything connected with bluetooth. She found it in the dumpster and fiddled with it until it worked again. She has to hunt for an outlet, but she gets it all set up and fills the room with music before getting to work.</p><p class="p1">It’s nice to have background noise. She hollers along to eclectic playlists that she's made over the course of her college career, and derives no small amount of satisfaction from bringing some life and color to this dusty old house.</p><p class="p1">Besides, all of the noise helps her ignore the small creaks and bumps in the house that are probably nothing.  <em>Probably</em>. </p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Chapter 2</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p class="p1">“So, who is he?”</p><p class="p1">Finn is leaning against the cabinets behind her as she mixes up spaghetti sauce that evening.</p><p class="p1">“Who’s who?”</p><p class="p1">She can just see Finn’s exasperated eye roll as he sidles up to the counter. “The person you’ve been hanging out with <em>every</em> day”.</p><p class="p1">“It’s not every day” she counters, and immediately regrets it. Finn looks like a cat in the cream all of a sudden.</p><p class="p1">“And! it’s not a guy. So jot that down.”</p><p class="p1">“What—“</p><p class="p1">“It’s a job. Just to make some extra cash.”</p><p class="p1">Finn’s eyes get comically wider. “Do you mean…is it…are you selling yourself!?”</p><p class="p1">Rey brings the can of pasta sauce down harder than she really means to, and whirls to face him.</p><p class="p1">“No! No, of course not Finn, god—“</p><p class="p1">“Good! Because you know Peanut, I would never want that for you. I’d happily pay your rent for years if it meant you didn’t have to…”</p><p class="p1">Rey stops him with a glare.</p><p class="p1">“First of all, thank you. Second of all, it’s a totally legitimate avenue—we should be reducing stigma around it. And you know perfectly well that if I wanted to do it you’d support me.”</p><p class="p1">“Okay, yes” he waves a hand around vaguely. “I’d support you in anything you wanted to do."</p><p class="p1">There follows a moment where he is clearly considering a list of all possible careers, and deciding that she can do any of them.</p><p class="p1">"But…it’s not sex work is it?”</p><p class="p1">Rey laughs at him a little, bumping his shoulder on the way around him to the trash can.</p><p class="p1">“No, it’s cleaning work.”</p><p class="p1">From her vantage point she gets to watch the understanding dawn on his face.</p><p class="p1">“You! You took that job at the Skywalker Manor!”</p><p class="p1">She expects him to freak out about it, but he actually seems excited.</p><p class="p1">“Oh MAN I’m so curious about that place! So you’ve already been inside!? What’s it like? Is everything dusty and old? Did you know that there’s supposed to be a monster living there? Is there anything unusual? Can Rose and I come help you?”</p><p class="p1">Rey laughs a little.</p><p class="p1">But she’s also surprised by how much she <em>doesn't</em> want Finn to come see the house.</p><p class="p1">Sometime in the last week she has come to think of it kind of as her own. She doesn’t want Finn and Rose tromping through the rose garden, laughing at the suit of armor, thumbing through Ben’s calligraphy practice, or gawking at the series of increasingly ridiculous portraits that she found in the hallway this afternoon. (They feature a range of glamorous and stately photos of older, dignified men and women with old-time hair styles and clothing. There are also newer portraits shot on modern digital cameras with varying degrees of finesse featuring the senator and her husband and son—Ben—through years of a truly awkward adolescence.)</p><p class="p1">“Not—not yet. I want to get the house a little cleaned up first. It’s a cool place, only a little spooky. And no monster spotted.”</p><p class="p1">She’s known Finn long enough to know that the face he’s making right now is half concerned, half suspicious. But he’s polite enough to accept her answer readily, and with only mild ribbing.</p><p class="p1">In the end he gets away with telling him about the floorplan, assuring him that she’s being paid fairly, and agreeing that he can come see it when the roses bloom.</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">***</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">The following Monday she’s in the middle of wrestling the runner rug out of the back door to give it a good beating when a <em>THUMP</em> resonates from upstairs.</p><p class="p1">There’s a huge gilt mirror at the end of the hallway, and she can see her own pale and fearful face reflected back towards her in the gloom.</p><p class="p1">The silence that follows is so absolute that she can almost pretend she imagined the crash, but it seems to be echoing in her head.</p><p class="p1">The feeling she’s been ignoring for weeks now comes back full force. <em>There’s someone in this house there’s someone in this house there’s—</em></p><p class="p1">
  <em>The ghost. The Monster.</em>
</p><p class="p1">Rey stands slowly and carefully, looking up at the stairs. She moves toward them like a sleepwalker, and without letting herself stop to think, she begins to climb, ignoring the horrible way the first landing creaks under her feet.</p><p class="p1">She lets her hand skate over the light switch, leaving the second landing in darkness. The sun is steaming through a window at the end of the upstairs hall, and it doesn't seem remotely spooky up here, but her heart is practically beating out of her chest anyway.</p><p class="p1">She crosses the hall and looks into the first room: It's a master bedroom, laden with dust. Vaguely she thinks about how many more weeks of cleaning she’ll have to do.</p><p class="p1">The second bedroom is just as dusty, but noticeably less grand.</p><p class="p1">The third door leads to a bathroom, and Rey stands frozen on the threshold for a moment because the bathroom...<em>is clean</em>.</p><p class="p1">The final door is closed.</p><p class="p1"><em>Ghosts can’t close doors. </em>She thinks fiercely, standing there. <em>Ghosts can’t make things go thump. </em></p><p class="p1">“Hello?” her voice holds a slight quaver but’s she’s proud of how calm she seems, overall.</p><p class="p1">“Hello, I’m just here to clean? Are you—are you the caretaker? Are those your roses?” Each sentence ends with a lilting question in her voice, and is met with complete silence. Even the traffic on the road outside seems to have faded.</p><p class="p1">“Are you B?”</p><p class="p1">Nothing.</p><p class="p1">“Someone named “B” hired me to clean, they said the house was being sold?” Rey’s heart rate has started to return to normal, and she considers reaching out to open this final door. The thump could have been a branch falling from the tree outside, couldn’t it have been? The bathroom could have been cleaned by the…gardener? Who came to tend the roses?</p><p class="p1">Rey bites her lip.</p><p class="p1">“I’m going to go back downstairs now. Let me know if anything I do is bothering you—you know—if the music is too loud or something.”</p><p class="p1">It might just be her imagination, but she thinks one of the shadows filtering under the closed door shifts a bit.</p><p class="p1">She doesn’t stick around to watch, but scurries back down the stairs.</p><p class="p1">On her way out that evening, she makes sure to neaten up her things a bit. She considers leaving a note on the stairs, but tells herself she’s acting crazy. If someone was here, they would have come out.</p><p class="p1">Right?</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p2">***</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">Later that evening she sits across the table from Finn and wonders if she should tell him what she’d nearly discovered today. Someone might actually live in the abandoned Skywalker Manor. Someone who usually takes great pains to appear <em>not there</em>.</p><p class="p1">Finn would make her promise not to go back. Finn would demand to go with her, and would march into the closed bedroom. The mystery would be solved, for better or worse, and Rey would lose her position.</p><p class="p1"><em>Discrete</em> the posting had said. Now she thinks she knows why.</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">***</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">That night she turns to Google. Right after she’d received the first email from “B” she’d done some basic history research on Skywalker Manor.</p><p class="p1">It was built in 1888 by a very wealthy oil mogul, but quickly switched ownership to a young and somewhat troubled looking woman named Shmi Skywalker—his only family. She, in turn, had died young and left the house to her son Anakin, and his wife had left it to their twins.</p><p class="p1">Tonight Rey pulls up pictures of the family with a new round of curiosity.</p><p class="p1">In response to “Leia Organa and Han Solo” she gets a series of wedding photos, society shots at elections and charity events, and posed moments in their public life. More interesting are the photos that appear to be taken by private family members in the home itself. Here’s a picture of Leia reading the newspaper in the breakfast nook on the morning following her election as Governor. Another features Han laughing and holding a dark-haired toddler upside-down. In another the family sits around in the living room, Han immersed in <em>Cars Weekly</em> while Leia faces the camera directly, hair down and fanned around her shoulders. In the background sits their teenage son, gangly and awkward, his knees drawn up to his chest as he focuses intently on the scrolls of practice calligraphy in front of him.</p><p class="p1">Rey stares at him.</p><p class="p1"><em>Ben Solo </em>she thinks, and after a moment she moves her cursor back the search bar and types “Ben Solo”.</p><p class="p1">Almost the first complete page of images are Ben in his military fatigues, hair cut extremely short and ears sticking out goofily. Several pictures include headlines from the articles that Rey vaguely remembers reading in the news 10 years ago:</p><p class="p1">
  <em>“Local son of Senator and heir to the Skywalker fortune presumed dead in Iraq”</em>
</p><p class="p1">
  <em>“Ben Solo, last Skywalker heir missing in Iraq”</em>
</p><p class="p1">
  <em>“Skywalker Son dead in war—family fractured just months before election season”</em>
</p><p class="p1">She taps to the next page. There are still a few military shots, but there are younger photos too. Most of the time Ben is hanging back behind his father, his mother, several other aids, or family staff. He looks stiff, bored, awkward, and sullen most of the time.</p><p class="p1">Two pictures stand out. In one he stands in the Manor's back yard among the roses which are in full bloom. He’s holding a medal that says “Best Rose Garden, 2007”. His hair is longer than it was in the military or childhood photos, and his boyish grin reveals slightly crooked teeth and a dimple. In the other he sits on the grand staircase in the Skywalker Manor, petting a large orange cat who is surrounded by a litter of what are clearly her newborn kittens.</p><p class="p1">Rey stares (and stares and stares). Then she stands up abruptly from the kitchen table. She has her shoes on before she realizes what she’s doing, and how remarkably foolish it would be to march to the Skywalker Manor in the middle of the night to confront the ghost of Ben Solo and his cat.</p><p class="p1">Ghost?</p><p class="p1"><em>Presumed dead</em> her brains supplies, as she shucks her shoes back off on the rack by the door. <em>Presumed.</em></p><p class="p1">Could Ben Solo seriously be alive and well, living in the Skywalker Manor just up the street, theoretically going to the grocery story and the bank and whatever else people had to do in modern society even if they lived in their parent’s abandoned house like a recluse? It seemed so far fetched, but Rey can’t ignore that <em>thump</em>. Or the clean bathroom, or the cat, or the roses.</p><p class="p1">She is going to march in there tomorrow and figure out what was going on. The posting had asked her to be discrete, but surely that didn’t extend to ignoring the <em>missing son</em> of the Senator hiding in plain sight in a house she’d been asked to clean. Right?</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">***</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">She wimps out. She’s not due to clean the next day, and she was supposed to go out shopping with Rose anyway. And now that she has had a night to sleep on it, what is she really planning on saying to the ghost of Ben Solo, corporeal or not, when and if she finds him? What if the reason he’s hiding from the world is a horrible deformity? He <em>was</em> in the war after all. His early-life pictures showcase an odd set of features, so it’s not like he was a stunningly beautiful man who has to hide his ruined face away in shame.</p><p class="p1">But then again…</p><p class="p1">Rey navigates back to the browser window still open behind her email. He’s not <em>bad</em> looking either. He’s interesting. He looks like someone who thinks a lot, someone who is calm but barely contained. Hopefully his war accident didn’t ruin his eyes, she thinks disconnectedly. He really has the most mesmerizing—</p><p class="p1">Rose bursts into their apartment and Rey SLAMS her computer closed. It’s not like 2.4 million people haven’t already googled Ben Solo…it’s just…the way she was just doing so feels a little obsessive. And she has better things to do.</p><p class="p1">Rose is not paying any attention to Rey being weird, though, luckily.</p><p class="p1">“Hey! Is Finn here?”</p><p class="p1">Rey shakes her head as she gets up, starting to gather her shopping bags. “No, he went out to lunch with an incredibly tall, indescribably beautiful blond woman.”</p><p class="p1">She nearly doubles over with laughter at the look of utmost horror and shock on the other woman’s face before Rose realizes she’s being teased and bristles.</p><p class="p1">“Kidding” Rey gasps out between laughs “he’s at the dentist”.</p><p class="p1">Rose is still shaking her head, looking decidedly pink in the cheeks.</p><p class="p1">“He would be perfectly within his right to go out for lunch with any number of beautiful women and men” she sniffs, affecting a sense of composed nonchalance.</p><p class="p1">“He asked if you would be at trivia on Thursday” Rey replies, and grins at the wicked, happy mirroring smile on Rose’s face.</p><p class="p1">“Now I will be.”</p><p class="p1">“You know” Rey starts cautiously. “You know…I think it would be safe for you to actually ask him out. I mean, I know you want to make sure that you’re not ruining your friendship—and I know you won’t—but…wouldn’t it just be better if you just went for it instead of looking for signs that he’s as crazy into you as you are into him? Which he is.”</p><p class="p1">“I know, I know,” Rose scuffs her toe on the rolled edge of the carpet where Rey trips on a regular basis. “It’s one thing to know that, and another entirely to look at his beautiful face and say ‘Hey you’re pretty great, want to go on a date?’ Rhyme intended.”</p><p class="p1">“Not a single person in the world could turn down a rhyme that good” Rey says as she holds the door open for Rose and they tumble out into the stairway, giggling.</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">***</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">On Monday afternoon, Rey is in a bad mood. She wanted to have cleaned enough of the kitchen at this point to be able to move on to the upstairs, but she’s stuck scrubbing at the outside of a cabinet that appears to have been <em>coated</em> in jam at some point, and left to dry for 10-odd years.</p><p class="p1">Also, this morning in class she learned that she’d be expected to complete an internship as part of her curriculum for the spring, and there’s no earthly way she has enough time to pull that off between school itself, her normal part time job at the car repair shop, and the 15 hours she regularly spends at the Skywalker Manor each week.</p><p class="p1">Well, more like 20 hours. She’s taken to arriving an hour early to start her homework in front of the beautiful bay windows, and staying late to read bits and pieces of select books in the Skywalker personal library. She probably could just borrow one but it feels strange—like taking a piece of the house away where it doesn’t belong. She’s resorted to just sort of standing at the library shelves, not trusting herself to sit down and get comfortable (she’d never leave), and reading a chapter or two at a time.</p><p class="p1">She’s also annoyed with herself because she is stalling and she knows it.</p><p class="p1">She usually takes pride in her strength and fortitude, and in her ability to get things done efficiently. She <em>could</em> already have finished the upstairs bedrooms and she knows it. And she also knows she hasn’t because she’s afraid to go up there.</p><p class="p1">But that’s not entirely true either, because she <em>definitely</em> goes up there. She has spent two weeks worth of work-days standing for 5 minutes silently outside of Ben’s (and she’s decided it must be his) bedroom door. The same Rey that was ready to barge in and start asking questions and taking names can’t seem to get up the gumption to end the mystery.</p><p class="p1">She’s spent another half hour on the jam stain, and the kitchen sink, and a stubborn spot on the armor when a series of texts come in from Rose.</p><p class="p1"> </p>
<p></p><blockquote>
  <p class="p1">
    <em>4:45:33<br/>
</em>
    <em>GUESS WHAT</em>
  </p>
  <p class="p1">
    <em>4:45:41<br/>
</em>
    <em>I AM GOING TO DO IT</em>
  </p>
  <p class="p2">
    <em>4:45:51<br/>
</em>
    <em>THERE’S A PARTY AT PAIGE’S APARTMENT ON SATURDAY AND I AM GOING TO TAKE FINN OUT TO DINNER BEFOREHAND</em>
  </p>
  <p class="p1">
    <em>4:46:01<br/>
If he says yes of course.</em>
  </p>
  <p class="p1">
    <em>4:46:40<br/>
o god o god</em>
  </p>
</blockquote><p class="p1"> </p><p class="p1">Rey laughs and quickly types out an encouraging reply.</p><p class="p2"> </p>
<p></p><blockquote>
  <p class="p1">
    <em>4:47:12<br/>
</em>
    <em>(Of course he will)</em>
  </p>
</blockquote><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">And then spends five minutes staring at the words “I’m going to do it” on the little screen.</p><p class="p1">So is SHE damn it.</p><p class="p1">She stops by the library and snatches up an old favorite book—<em>A Room With a View</em>—and then she marches up the stairs, making no effort to reduce the amount of noise she’s making. The orange cat yells at her from the second landing, but she steps over him, walks firmly to the end of the hall, and knocks three times on the closed bedroom door.</p><p class="p1">Nothing.</p><p class="p1">She knocks one more time, a single echoing rap, and then takes a deep breath and says “Ben?”</p><p class="p1">She leans closer to the door and catches her breath at the distinct creak of a chair on the other side.</p><p class="p1">There IS someone in there. There has been all along.</p><p class="p1">“Ben Solo?”</p><p class="p1">Silence.</p><p class="p1">“This is Rey again, the cleaning girl. I am going to start cleaning up here. Eventually I’m going to get to your room and then I’ll have to open it. I’m going to make a lot of noise, is that okay? If you’re a ghost, keep out of my way.”</p><p class="p1">She pauses for a moment to breath and press her ear even closer to the grain of the wooden door. There hasn’t been another sound since the chair squeak but she could swear the person on the other side of the door is listening with equally bated breath.</p><p class="p1">“Okay” she says more to herself than to him, “Okay I’m going to go now. I usually stay here to read a little bit but I have to get home and make dinner. I really like your library, I hope you don’t mind I’ve been using it. Here’s my favorite book, I hope you have a good day.”</p><p class="p1">She slides the paperback under the door and practically turns tail and runs down the stairs, heart pounding.</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">***</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">By the beginning of May, Ben’s bedroom is the only room she hasn't cleaned in the house. She’s stalled enough in the last couple of weeks, going so far as to wrestle the enormous victorian rug out of the master suite and spend an entire afternoon beating in the yard, smelling the roses that are just on the cusp of unfurling into the sweet spring air. The envelope of cash comes every Friday, like clockwork, and Rey has kept “B” abreast of her progress with rambling weekly emails, but he must know as well as she does that she has to finish soon.</p><p class="p1">And she’s upset about it.</p><p class="p1">She <em>likes</em> the Skywalker Manor. She likes the way the sun bursts into the sitting room, the wrapping porch, the enormous stately furniture, even the suit of armor which she’s taken to calling “Vader” because it reminds her of a sci-fi movie she saw many years ago. She especially likes the garden, full of large swaying bushes and trees resplendent in the bright greens, yellows and blues of the season. She loves the roses, loves watching them creep up their trellises and peek bright colorful petals out of their tightly coiled buds.</p><p class="p1">But every good thing in her life so far has come to an end (friendship with Finn and Rose not included, luckily, though she worries about it sometimes in the small hours of the morning).</p><p class="p1">This must end too.</p><p class="p1">Earlier that week, Rey had finished cleaning and stopped by Ben’s room to push a new book under the door—this one full of sticky notes with commentary. After the usual silence, she’d told him that Friday was going to be her last day. She’d need to come into his room to finish her cleaning, and then she’d be out of his hair. More than ever she’d had the impression that he was standing just there on the other side of the door, listening to her every word, but nothing changed and she eventually retreated down the stairs and went home.</p><p class="p1">Now it was Friday.</p><p class="p1">Rey climbs the stairs very slowly, and makes a show of checking every bedroom on the floor like she is some kind of quality control drill sergeant. Everything is clean, everything is in it’s proper place.</p><p class="p1">Eventually she finds herself in her normal spot outside of Ben’s door.</p><p class="p1">She is a little surprised there isn’t a worn spot in the floor from how often she has stood here. It feels a little bit like she has spent half of the spring in this exact spot. Today is different though. Today she is going in.</p><p class="p1">She takes three deep breaths, knocks twice, and pushes into the room.</p><p class="p1">Her heart—the traitor—is beating so loudly in her ears that she can barely hear herself think, let alone hear the sounds of anyone moving around. But as she stands there at the threshold of the room, the frozen moment became a minute, then became several.</p><p class="p1">There is no one here.</p><p class="p1">
  <em>There is no one here.</em>
</p><p class="p1">Rey staggers a couple more steps into the room. The empty room. <em>Empty, empty, empty!</em></p><p class="p1">She feels strange, like something is welling in her chest—an emotion so deep and strong it will bowl her over if she lets it wash up. There is a strange rasping noise that she can’t find the source of, until she realizes it is her own breathing, coming in gasping jerks.</p><p class="p1">She doesn’t <em>know</em> Ben Solo. She doesn’t know anything about him beyond his childhood pictures. She has never spoken with him, never seen him in the flesh, never heard his voice. But she had been so sure he was here. She’d been so positive of his presence as she went about her daily tasks in the house. He had felt like a curiosity, a silent but comfortable companion. But he doesn’t exist. He is dead in the war. She is so lonely she has been making him up.</p><p class="p1">Probably there is a squatter or a recluse living in this house, someone who usually vacates when she shows up. There is definite evidence that someone is usually here. Modern appliances live at odds with a grand four-poster bed and bookshelves: A microwave on a desk, a laptop, her books stacked loosely on a table, a toaster, cans of food, a mini fridge, a small enclave of dishes…</p><p class="p1">She stares at it all, standing in the center of the room, dumbstruck. This is not the way she thought it would be.</p><p class="p1">She’d been imagining this person (Ben) as some kind of half-human beast, lurking in the shadows, eating rats, crouching on the other side of the door and being slowly tamed into civility while she talked to him from the other side. It is so at odds with the clean, well-kept room she stands in now.</p><p class="p1">Slowly she becomes aware that there was no work for her to do. The house is clean, her employment at the Skywalker Manor is over. Whoever is living in the upstairs room is a mystery that will continue on when she is gone.</p><p class="p1">With a kind of calm she wasn't feeling five minutes ago, she accepts the disappointment and tries to let it go.</p><p class="p1">She leaves the room, closing the door quietly behind her. She absentmindedly scratches the cat behind the ears, descends the grand staircase, collects her final payment envelope from the suit of armor, and exits through the back door.</p><p class="p1">She turns toward the garden and has to catch her breath in surprise.</p><p class="p1">In the several hours she’d been inside, the garden had come into full bloom as if by magic.</p><p class="p1">Roses of all description nod in the breeze, the air perfumed by their scent, thick and heady. Insects buzz and bump between newly revealed rose blossoms which are turning the world into an amazing riot of color—all reds and oranges meeting bright swirled yellows and greens fading to purple. It is an absolute spectacle.</p><p class="p1">And in the middle of it all, leaning on a rake, is Ben Solo.</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">***</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">They stare at each other across the twenty feet that separate them.</p><p class="p1">Ben in the flesh is so much bigger than she expected. Nothing in his adolescent pictures or military profile suggested the incredible amount of space he takes up, standing there amongst the riot of color in the yard. And he is a <em>man</em> she realizes, with a weird flop of her heart. The boy from the photos is gone, replaced by a fully realized adult. His hair is long and dark, swept away from his face. He wears dark pants and a dark shirt that do nothing to hide how well-built he is beneath it all, strong and solid. A scar bisects his face and she is drawn to staring at it, not even realizing that she is moving closer to him until she is standing right in front of him, staring up.</p><p class="p1">For his part, he seems to be just as spellbound, looking right back at her with something indescribable in his eyes.</p><p class="p1">“You’re the ghost” she whispers</p><p class="p1">“I’m the monster” he says, his voice low and deep.</p><p class="p1">And OH, if that doesn’t send a chill up her spine.</p><p class="p1">She’s going to touch him, she can’t help it. After bursting into his room only to discover he wasn’t there, she can’t quite believe he’s real.</p><p class="p1">Her hand is inches from his chest, right over his heart, when he steps back.</p><p class="p1">Which is when she realizes where she is and who this is and what’s happening.</p><p class="p1">“Holy SHIT!” She leaps back as well and clutches both of her hands together as if telling them off for wandering on their own.</p><p class="p1">“Holy shit, I’m sorry!”</p><p class="p1">He’s been hiding from the world for the better part of a decade—if he wanted to be touched by random people in his own back yard he would certainly have picked a different life plan.</p><p class="p1">But <em>oh</em>, there’s a magnetism there too, and she thinks he feels it too, because he hasn’t stopped staring at her.</p><p class="p1">“You—you’re Ben Solo, right?”</p><p class="p1">His eyes harden a little bit and he straightens up with a nod.</p><p class="p1">“I’m Rey. I’ve been cleaning the house…” she starts because frankly, she doesn’t know what else to say to him.</p><p class="p1">He raises his eyebrows and she’s immediately sure that he has been in his room every single time she’s stood outside it, talking at him. And she’d warned him she was coming in today so he’d made himself scarce because he <em>doesn’t. want. to. be. bothered. </em></p><p class="p1">
  <em>God.</em>
</p><p class="p1">“Okay! okay, I’m going to go. Your roses are lovely, have a nice…day.”</p><p class="p1">She doesn’t want to look like she’s hightailing it out of there, so she pauses to smell a cluster of roses near the gate, pulling them toward her face. She gasps slightly at a sudden bite of pain and looks down to realize she’s cut herself on one of the fresh shining thorns. There’s a big orb of blood welling up on her thumb, and she feels like even more of a moron because <em>of course.</em></p><p class="p1">She makes haste, then, and doesn’t glance until she’s nearly through the tall wood-slated fence at the side of the house, and finds Ben still staring at her with those dark, liquid eyes.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. Chapter 3</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p class="p1">If she’s as quiet and withdrawn as she feels that evening at home, Finn doesn’t say anything about it. He rattles on about his day for a while, flipping pancakes on the stovetop while she slices apples for a compote, steering clear of her bandaged thumb. He’s nervous and a little jumpy himself—he and Rose are going out on their third date tonight and she knows for a fact that he showered <em>twice</em> this afternoon.</p><p class="p1">Only when the table is set and they’ve settled into eating does he ask about her day.</p><p class="p1">“I finished cleaning at the Skywalker Manor” she says conversationally.</p><p class="p1">Finn’s eyes go wide. “Oh my gosh! I thought you were going to take us to see it when you were done!”</p><p class="p1">She was, she realizes. Knowing the work was nearly done she’d been planning on bringing Rose and Finn around to see the house, but the idea that Ben might be there had kept staying her hand. And she had never quite believed that she’d work up the gumption to meet Ben on her own terms. And she certainly had not thought that they’d have a charged meeting in the garden surrounded by blooming roses after which she’d flee the premises. So no, she hadn’t managed to bring Finn.</p><p class="p1">“I was waiting for the roses to officially bloom” she lies. “And they just started today but I had finished. Maybe I can email the owner and see if I can come back and show you around?”</p><p class="p1">She knows perfectly well that she doesn’t want to do this, but she makes a show of getting her laptop off of the coffee table and opening it up.</p><p class="p1">And feels her eyes widen in surprise when she has three unread emails from “B”.</p><p class="p1">
  
</p><p> </p>
<p></p><blockquote>
  <p class="p1">
    <em>May 9, 6:45pm</em>
  </p>
  <p class="p1">
    <em>Rey</em>
  </p>
  <p class="p1">
    <em>Is your cleaning complete?</em>
  </p>
  <p class="p1">
    <em>B</em>
  </p>
</blockquote><p class="p2"> </p><p> </p>
<p></p><blockquote>
  <p class="p1">
    <em>May 9, 6:51pm</em>
  </p>
  <p class="p1">
    <em>Rey</em>
  </p>
  <p class="p1">
    <em>If you’re looking for more work or more money, the shutters need painting. </em>
  </p>
  <p class="p1">
    <em>B</em>
  </p>
</blockquote><p class="p2"> </p><p> </p>
<p></p><blockquote>
  <p class="p1">
    <em>May 9, 7:26pm</em>
  </p>
  <p class="p1">
    <em>I’m sorry. I know you weren’t expecting to run into me today. I am not used to seeing people, and I didn’t know what to say to you. I can’t remember the last time I talked to someone, actually. I like your books, I hope you will come back.</em>
  </p>
  <p class="p1">
    <em>Ben</em>
  </p>
</blockquote><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">Luckily Rose shows up for their date right then, because Finn looks like he’s ready to give her the 9th degree of questioning when she looks up from her email. There’s a flurry of commotion as Finn jumps up from the table and hurries to give Rose a sweet and ridiculously awkward kiss. Rey takes the chance to close her laptop and slide it back where it belongs, but does not miss the look Finn gives her that clearly says ‘I want to know what that was about.’</p><p class="p1">So does she.</p><p class="p1">Her heart is racing and she feels kind of tingly all over. “B” is Ben? She’s been talking to Ben the <em>whole time?</em></p><p class="p1">Sourly she reminds herself that she has been talking to his closed bedroom door for almost as long, but doesn’t linger on that.</p><p class="p1">She opens up her laptop the moment Rose and Finn bustle out of the door, and stares at the messages some more.</p><p class="p1"><em>He wants me to come</em> <em>back</em> she thinks. <em>He likes my books!</em></p><p class="p1">Then she forces herself to get up and take a shower. And then start her laundry. And then pick up all of the clean clothes strewn around her room. And then sort through her bills and miscellaneous papers and put them away where they belong.</p><p class="p1">And only when that’s all done does she let herself sit down on the couch and write her reply.</p><p class="p1"> </p><p> </p><p> </p>
<p></p><blockquote>
  <p class="p1">
    <em>May 10, 1:12am</em>
  </p>
  <p class="p1">
    <em>Ben,</em>
  </p>
  <p class="p1">
    <em>I’m not sure what to say. I’m surprised you are real—all this time I have half-believed the stories from the neighborhood kids that you’re a ghost, haunting the house. I guess you are, in a way. What do you do with your time? Why do you…</em>
  </p>
</blockquote><p class="p1">She stares at her blinking cursor for the better part of ten minutes, trying to decide if she’s allowed to pry.</p>
<p></p><blockquote>
  <p>
    <em>Why do you live there? How did you survive the war? Why are you selling the house? Do you parents know you’re alive? I don’t understand.</em>
  </p>
  <p class="p1">
    <em>I’m glad you like my books. Right now I’m re-reading a book from high school: Fahrenheit 451. I think you have it in your library too.</em>
  </p>
  <p class="p1">
    <em>Rey</em>
  </p>
</blockquote><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">He responds first thing the following morning:</p><p class="p2"> </p><p> </p><p> </p>
<p></p><blockquote>
  <p class="p1">
    <em>May 10, 6:24am</em>
  </p>
  <p class="p1">
    <em>I don’t want to talk about it.</em>
  </p>
</blockquote><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">***</p><p class="p1"> </p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">He doesn’t respond again and neither does she, chagrined by how brusquely he shut down her questions. Technically it’s within his right to not tell her anything, but he reached out in the first place…and why would he do that if he didn’t want to talk to her? And how can she talk to him without knowing at least <em>something</em> about him?</p><p class="p1">Rey spends her first Monday afternoon home since she started cleaning seven weeks ago. She sits by her own window to do her homework then spends the afternoon reaching out to intern programs across the city. She tries to ignore how much she misses sitting in the grand living room at Skywalker Manor with the promise of mysterious Ben Solo somewhere above her.</p><p class="p1">Wednesday passes in the same way, and then the rest of the week. Finn is busy enough with school and work that the two of them are never home together long enough for him to trap her in a line of questioning.</p><p class="p1">By Friday she can barely stand it, she’s burning to email him again—to demand more answers—but she can’t see how that would be helpful. And besides, it’s not like she knows him at all, if he doesn’t want to tell her anything, he doesn’t have to.</p><p class="p1">She carries this resolve with her, mostly convinced that their chance meeting was the end of something, not the beginning of it.</p><p class="p1">She’s so determined to be over it that when the follow-up finally comes, she pointedly opens her other emails first, brushes her teeth, and curls up in bed before tapping on the subject line, heart hammering.</p><p class="p2"> </p><p> </p><p> </p>
<p></p><blockquote>
  <p class="p1">
    <em>May 21, 12:12am</em>
  </p>
  <p class="p1">
    <em>Yes, my parents know I live here. At least, mom does. She is the one who is the driving force behind selling the house—she needs money for her campaign and it’s time for me to move on. My time in the war was okay until it wasn’t. Our troupe commander was a guy named Snoke, and he was a tactical genius, but he clearly didn’t care about us at all. I lost so many comrades to his schemes that I started to think he was just using us as live bait. I conveniently disappeared during a particularly horrible fire-fight. It was chaos and fear all around…I slipped into the enemy caravan and let them carry me away. It took 6 months to get back home, and when I arrived my father was furious that I’d stepped out on the war. We haven’t spoken since. My mother supports my decision but I’m high profile enough that I couldn’t fade back into civilian life. And anyway, I have always…preferred to be alone. So I came back here, and have been living on my mother’s charity. </em>
  </p>
</blockquote><p class="p1">What follows is an in-depth (novel-quality) analysis of the book she’d recommended in the margin notes of one she'd given him. He has written nearly 1000 words on it, and at parts Rey’s eyes almost glaze over—she’s never gotten such a long email in her life—but she likes it anyway. She likes his clear passion for the subject, and is particularly delighted by having discovered something that brings him such joy.</p>
<p></p><blockquote>
  <p>
    <em>Anyway, the roses are still blooming, if you wanted to come see them.</em>
  </p>
  <p class="p1">
    <em>Sincerely, </em>
  </p>
  <p class="p1">
    <em>Ben</em>
  </p>
</blockquote><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">If she reads the email twice, then falls asleep cuddling her phone to her chest…who’ll judge her?</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">***</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">She’s just checked her hair in the bathroom mirror for the third time when Finn appears behind her, raising his eyebrow.</p><p class="p1">“Okay” he is chewing on his lip. “Okay—so—I asked you before and you wouldn’t tell me…and I respect your autonomy as a person and a roommate and all that jazz.”</p><p class="p1">He takes a step closer behind her in the bathroom and his hands come to his hips.</p><p class="p1">“But I think I’m going to play the ‘oldest friend’ card now, partially because I’m dying of curiosity and partially because I’m a little worried about you. <em>Who. Is. He?”</em></p><p class="p1">Rey groans and leans her head down to her hands on the counter (which musses the hair she just so-carefully arranged).</p><p class="p1">“Finn, you’re going to be so weird about it.”</p><p class="p1">“I won’t be weird!” his voice has gone up two octaves and he throws the toilet seat down so that he can sit with his knees drawn up nearly to where she’s standing and stare up at her earnestly, face the perfect picture of waiting contrition.</p><p class="p1">Rey rolls her eyes and groans again.</p><p class="p1">“Do you remember how I was cleaning the Skywalker Manor?”</p><p class="p1">He does not see fit to dignify that with a response, narrowing his eyes instead.</p><p class="p1">“Well so, do you know why the Organa-Solo family doesn’t live there anymore?”</p><p class="p1">This is clearly not where Finn thought she was going. “The—um, the senator’s family?”</p><p class="p1">“Yes.”</p><p class="p1">“Yeah, I mean, I guess. There was some torrid love affair between the senator and her brother wasn’t there? Luke Skywalker?”</p><p class="p1">It’s Rey’s turn to gape.<em> “What!?”</em></p><p class="p1">“Uh. Okay so I read that in a dirt rag at election time so maybe that’s…not true.”</p><p class="p1">Rey makes a mental note to check that story with Ben when she sees him.</p><p class="p1">O<em>h god she’s going to see him NOW</em>. Well as soon as she finishes this conversation…which has already taken a significantly stranger turn that she’d expected when she practiced in the shower.</p><p class="p1">Finn seems to collect himself. “Well the only other thing I know for sure is that they broke up after their son died in the war.”</p><p class="p1">“Yes,” says Rey before taking a deep breath “Yes, but the son didn’t die. He still lives in the house.”</p><p class="p1">“He—!”</p><p class="p1">She can see the cogs turning in Finn’s head. She can see the moment it all clicks into place. He leaps up from the toilet lid.</p><p class="p1">“ALL THIS TIME!?”</p><p class="p1">“I TOLD you you would be weird about it!” Rey responds heatedly.</p><p class="p1">“OF COURSE I’M WEIRD ABOUT IT! ALL THIS TIME YOU’VE BEEN GOING TO THAT HOUSE TO BANG THE DEAD—NOT DEAD SON OF THE SENATOR!?”</p><p class="p1">Rey’s voice gets shrill now too, and she’s sure the neighbors are wondering what they’re up to. “I’ve been CLEANING! I’ve only just officially met him! He keeps to his room and I’m not—how could you—DO I really look like the kind of person who would—“</p><p class="p1">But she can’t finish the sentence, because now that he’s said it, she is letting herself think about it, and it holds a certain intrigue.</p><p class="p1">She’s only just <em>met</em> him, she argues with herself.</p><p class="p1">But what’s been going on this whole time? With her obsessive behavior, standing outside of his bedroom door, researching him, treating him like her personal diary…</p><p class="p1">Has she been falling into love (or lust) with the idea of him this whole time? She whirls in horror to look at herself in the mirror again. Did she not just pick her cutest leggings, her least-pilled sweater, and lightly curl the wisps of hair that tumble free of her up-do? All just to go see him in a house where she’s been wearing carpenter pants and baggy sweatshirts for the last seven weeks?</p><p class="p1">“Peanut” Finn says carefully. He’s been watching the dawning realization on her face.</p><p class="p1">He’s being very gentle with her now, as if she’s an animal about to bolt. He reaches out for her hands and they both look down at them, tanned and worn by work and rigor. The evidence of the thorn wound is still obvious on her thumb, half-scabbed and resistant to healing.</p><p class="p1">“Is he kind?” Finn asks.</p><p class="p1">“I don’t really know” she replies. “I’ve only met him once and we emailed a couple of times back and forth. But…I think so. I really want him to be kind, if that makes any sense.”</p><p class="p1">“I think it sounds like a fairy tale” says Finn carefully. “I guess there’s every possibility that he is wonderful and all that, but all we know is that he sounds like a mildly dangerous recluse and…I’m just nervous for you, you know?”</p><p class="p1">“I know” she confirms, tearing up a little bit as it hits her just how much Finn cares for her, how much their friendship means. “I’ll be careful, I promise. As far as I know he just wants to show me the roses and talk about books. And maybe eventually paint the shutters.”</p><p class="p1">Finn laughs and rolls his eyes. “Oh my god.”</p><p class="p1">She give him an extra long hug on the way out, and promises to text him if her plans change.</p><p class="p1">And then she’s off, driving the familiar route to the Skywalker Manor.</p><p class="p1">She’d emailed Ben back last night to confirm that she would be coming to…see the roses today.</p><p class="p1">She arrives and climbs out of her car, suddenly feeling odd about what to do next. Should she go and knock on the front door? She has never gone through it, always going around the back instead. But now she’s a guest…or something. She’s saved the awkward moment of indecision by Ben opening the front door and stepping back into the darkness behind it. She supposes he must have watched her come up the walk from his window.</p><p class="p1">And then she’s inside, everything familiar to her except Ben, who’s standing with his hands clasped and his back hunched as if making himself smaller to fit the room.</p><p class="p1">“Hi” she says, and it comes out a little squeakier than she would like.</p><p class="p1">“Hello.” He looks fixedly at the chandelier for a moment (it took her a full afternoon to clean that particular item), and then down at her. “Would you, um, like a glass of water?”</p><p class="p1">She’s not really thirsty, but something to do with her hands sounds great. “Yes, please.”</p><p class="p1">She is surprised when he leads her through the living room and up the stairs instead of into the kitchen.</p><p class="p1">“Do you really not use any other part of the house?”</p><p class="p1">He pauses a couple of steps above her and shakes his head. “I’ve never needed much. And the house feels too grand for one person. It’s full of ghosts.”</p><p class="p1">She snorts a little at that, tipping her head toward him when he raises his eyebrow at her. “I think you’re the only ghost here” she replies.</p><p class="p1">There’s the slightest indication then—an upwards tilt of his lips, the beginning of a dimple on his cheek—a smile, maybe.</p><p class="p1">“The neighborhood certainly seems to think so. I feel a little like a literary witch, sometimes, with all of the kids coming and going and ringing the doorbell.”</p><p class="p1">They’ve reached his bedroom door which he opens and walks right through, leaving it open behind him for her. It’s so at odds with the reverence she’s paid to the outside of his door in the past, just walking in.</p><p class="p1">“So. You like to read?” she asks because the silence stretching between them is getting weird.</p><p class="p1">“I write, too” he replies. “I’m the author of a sci-fi series called “The Knights”.</p><p class="p1">Rey nearly drops the glass he just handed her. “<em>You're</em> Kylo Ren!?”</p><p class="p1">He looks equally surprised. “You’ve read them?”</p><p class="p1">“Everyone has read them, Ben, my god! You must be making so much money—surely you’ve noticed how successful they are by that alone!”</p><p class="p1">He looks uncomfortable all of a sudden. “I don’t really…I don’t need money that much” here he shrugs kind of helplessly at the house around them. “So I just let it flow into a bank account and leave it alone. I’ve always been much more interested in art than wealth…and I was lucky to be born into a pretty prosperous situation.”</p><p class="p1">That’s for sure. At least he knows about his privilege.</p><p class="p1">“Art” she says softly. “I’ve never had the time or the aptitude for art, but yours is beautiful. I saw your calligraphy downstairs in the library, too.”</p><p class="p1">Unexpectedly he blushes all the way to his hairline, and to the bits of his large ears that stick out beyond his hair.</p><p class="p1">“I—thank you.”</p><p class="p1">There follows another somewhat awkward silence where they stare at each other across the room, and then Rey dives into a line of questioning about the inspiration for the The Knights books.</p><p class="p1">At some point he realizes he wanted to make them a snack (some sort of muffins from a mix that he goes about making in a pizza oven she hadn’t seen on her first visit to the room. She is a bit transfixed by this process—both by the ingenuity of the solution and the absurd lack of necessity for it, considering there’s a perfectly good oven below their feet.)</p><p class="p1">All the while they carry a surprisingly comfortable conversation about the inspiration for his characters, the comic books he loved as a child and how the main band of fighters built from a bond of brotherhood and competition had essentially become his Knights.</p><p class="p1">She tells him about how books were her solace in the foster care system, hurrying on when he looks like he’s leaning in to ask a follow-up question. She explains how she didn’t get to have a lot of possessions, but she always had a library card, and could count off books she’d loved as mental escapes when times got hard.</p><p class="p1">“You are welcome to any book in this house, any time” he says seriously. “The library is yours—when the house is sold, I’ll make sure you can keep as many as you want.”</p><p class="p1">Stunned silence follows this proclamation, and Rey feels traitorous tears tingling at the corners of her eyes. Ben, for his part, looks a little taken aback by his own sincerity, but doesn’t retract it.</p><p class="p1">“Ben that’s….I can’t possibly…” the moment feels very intimate all of a sudden. How could he possibly offer her something like this? But he seems resolute, and she can’t bring herself to turn him down.</p><p class="p1">She doesn’t have any words for how much the gesture means to her, so she just nods.</p><p class="p1">The ding of the pizza oven shakes them out of the moment, and he busies himself with popping the muffins free from their mold and making up a plate. They move out into the back yard, and he leads her to a table and chairs so deep in the foliage she’s never noticed them before. They settle comfortably back into conversation—Rey is telling him about Finn and Rose and their ridiculous and hilarious courtship—as the roses wave lazily and comfortably in the perfumed air.</p><p class="p1">They eat all of the muffins, and Ben has just finished telling her about the different varieties of roses around them (and how he raised them and crossed the breeds and generally was a big nerd for his whole life) when the mood shifts.</p><p class="p1">“I missed flowers when I was in Iraq” he says softly.</p><p class="p1">“They don’t have flowers there?”</p><p class="p1">“They didn’t where we were. It was an ugly concrete block bunker, kind of halfway up a hill that had been completely appropriated as housing and roads and army territory. It was awful. My bunkmate was this guy named Hux, and he loved talking about blowing up terrorists. It was more than patriotism, it was gross.”</p><p class="p1">“That sounds awful” Rey replies, carefully. “Could you have been transferred to a different block? Or a different bunkmate or something?”</p><p class="p1">Ben’s expression sours. “Hux wasn’t the exception. The whole group had a chip on their shoulder, they WANTED to fight.”</p><p class="p1">“Didn’t you?”</p><p class="p1">
  <em>“Yes.”</em>
</p><p class="p1">It’s very still, all of a sudden, and Rey leans forward a little bit, trying to catch his eye while he actively tries to avoid hers.</p><p class="p1">She’s reminded that he has been hiding in a house for years, that he doesn’t know how to talk to people anymore. She’s no stranger to the feeling, Finn and Rose are about the only people in the world that are able to make her completely human.</p><p class="p1">She leans back and averts her eyes a little bit, giving him more room. She angles her shoulders away and observes the roses above them.</p><p class="p1">“And why is that?”</p><p class="p1">He’s silent for a moment, and in the waning light she can see him kind of moving his jaw around, as if he’s grinding his teeth. His hands are fists on the table, she realizes, and for the first time since she met him, she’s a little afraid.</p><p class="p1">“Because I would be<em> good at it</em>.” he grits out. “I AM good at it.”</p><p class="p1">“You’re good at—"</p><p class="p1">“I’m good at ANGER” he hisses. “I’m good at KILLING. I went away to war to escape my family and their wealth and frivolity—the way that my art wasn’t good enough for them and I wasn’t good at things expected of a senator’s son….”</p><p class="p1">He’s breathing heavily as he gears up for the next part.</p><p class="p1">“And I thought ‘I can be good at something that everyone can be proud of’, so I joined the fucking <em>meat machine</em> and I acted like those guys, and I killed and I celebrated it. All that anger I’ve had my whole life—THIS ANGER—I usually could quench it with art but in the war it was just like—it was like—EXPLOSIVE.”</p><p class="p1">Rey can hardly breath, staring across the table at him. He looks like the monster right now, face red and sweating, the angry white scar cutting so sharply through his features that he almost looks distorted. She suddenly realizes what the yelling and banging heard round the Skywalker Manor must have been.</p><p class="p1">“So you ran away…?”</p><p class="p1">It’s like the fight has gone completely out of him. His hands unclench and his head falls forward—the sweep of dark hair mostly hiding his face.</p><p class="p1">“No. No, it was a dishonorable discharge. I tried to kill Hux.”</p><p class="p1">The silence is absolute. Rey stares at Ben, Ben stares at the table. The day insects have fallen quiet, and the crickets haven’t quite started up yet.</p><p class="p1">“You lied to me.”</p><p class="p1">Silence.</p><p class="p1">“And the papers said you’d died.”</p><p class="p1">“<em>Money”</em> he whispers. “My family covered it up. And then they fractured into pieces, and they hid me in the house, and they went on with their lives.”</p><p class="p1">There’s something strange building in Rey’s chest, and she thinks it might be a sob.</p><p class="p1">Inexplicably she thinks of a fight scene from The Knights books that she read when she was in high school. Some of her classmates were reading at the same time and she remembers them discussing a particularly gritty part of the book, where the main character had gone completely berserk, tried to attack his own family. Her friends thought it was too extreme, too intense.</p><p class="p1">Rey had just been transferred to her second foster family of the semester. She slept in a room with three other girls. A ‘brother’ had tried to take off her shirt when she was sleeping. She remembers thinking the anger and violence in that book wasn’t over the top at all.</p><p class="p1">And now she is sitting across from the author of those books.</p><p class="p1"><em>You’re not alone</em> she thinks, forcefully. <em>You’re not.</em></p><p class="p1">He starts violently when her hand touches his. He looks at her like he’s forgotten she’s here, and maybe he has.</p><p class="p1">She wonders if he’s ever told anyone what he just told her.</p><p class="p1">They stare at each other across the table for a frozen moment, and then his eyes drop down to her hand, covering his.</p><p class="p1">“You were cut”, he says, and in the fading daylight his other hand comes up to hover over hers, casting a deep shadow over the wound.</p><p class="p1">“Yes” she breaths. “Your roses.”</p><p class="p1">It seems to be confirmation of something for him. He breaths deeply, and lowers his head to their clasped hands.</p><p class="p1">How long they stay frozen like that, Rey isn’t sure. His forehead is warm against her skin, and she can just feel the ghost of his breath tickling her fingers.</p><p class="p1">She is just considering what to say to him when he stands abruptly.</p><p class="p1">“Thank you for coming” he says with barely contained emotion, voice quavering on an exhale. “Please remember to take any books you want.”</p><p class="p1">And then he strides away across the lawn, finality in his every step, and is swallowed by the deepening gloom.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0004"><h2>4. Chapter 4</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>This story earns its *Explicit* warning near the end of this chapter. If you'd like to carry on your merry way without reading that, please skip the following section. </p><p>"'Oh!' she cries in surprise as her back makes contact with the carpet."</p><p>...and pick back up after...</p><p>"'Good' she says sleepily. 'We’ll have to do that a couple more times, okay?'"</p><p>I'll give a quick summary in the bottom notes for you! </p><p>Also of note, Ben and Rey do not use or talk about using protection for sex in this chapter, but I encourage the reader to imagine that conversation took place 'offscreen' and always practice safe sex themselves :)</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p class="p1">Time moves strangely after Rey's emotionally charged second meeting with Ben Solo.</p><p class="p1">In the immediate aftermath, she drives herself home in a daze, and must look so shell-shocked that Finn doesn't ask any questions, just hugs her tight and leaves her to her own thoughts.</p><p class="p1">The strangest thing about the following days, though, is that Rey doesn't actually <em>feel</em> like the date went <em>poorly</em>.</p><p class="p1">Obviously Ben shouting about his disgrace at the hands of the military, his family, and his own anger was not what anyone would consider a <em>good</em> date. But at the same time, some of the things they'd shared with each other, the easy way they'd interacted, the warm heady evening...it had all felt like a beginning, not an ending.</p><p class="p1">The hopeful, empathetic spark that had been lit in Rey's chest before she even met the man only burns brighter, and she can't help but believe that it it's mutual.</p><p class="p1">The hope dampens, though, when Ben won't reply to her.</p><p class="p1">She had't taken his abrupt retreat as dismissal, but the absolute radio silence that follows their last interaction speaks of other truths. </p><p class="p1">And it feels awful.</p><p class="p1">She doesn’t feel like she can reasonably send any more than three emails without receiving responses, but she’s feeling a little unreasonable, so she sends five.</p><p class="p1">She writes him <em>novels</em>. She writes him everything she would have said in that moment they were in the garden, if she’d felt like she could speak at all.</p><p class="p1">She tells him about her childhood, tries to impress upon him how alike she thinks they are.</p><p class="p1">She meanders through a book and gives him nearly a live blow-by-blow report of her reactions to it.</p><p class="p1">She spends a whole week composing a sort of train-of-thought diary that she sends without editing or re-reading.</p><p class="p1">As time goes on and it becomes increasingly clear that he's shut her out, she yells at him for doing so—right when she felt like they were getting to know each other.</p><p class="p1">Finally, she has to accept this for what it is. She spends a tearful evening telling Finn everything, and loving him so fiercely for supporting her rather than pointing out the obvious ways in which she's acting like a lovelorn fool over someone she feels she's known half of her life instead of half of an afternoon.</p><p class="p1">Finn helps her compose her last email, and takes her out for ice cream the minute she sends it, and promises her that where one door closes, another will open. </p><p class="p1">The final email elicits no response, and she can almost pretend that it doesn't bother her. Life must go on.</p><p class="p2"> </p><p> </p>
<p></p><blockquote>
  <p class="p1">
    <em>June 13, 10:25pm</em>
  </p>
  <p class="p1">
    <em>Ben</em>
  </p>
  <p class="p1">
    <em>I take your silence to mean you don't feel the same way I do. I wish you could have told me so properly, but I respect your wish to be left alone. </em>
  </p>
  <p class="p1">
    <em>I won’t bother you again, hope everything is well.</em>
  </p>
  <p class="p1">
    <em>Rey</em>
  </p>
</blockquote><p class="p1"> </p><p class="p1"> </p>
<hr/><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">
  <em>August</em>
</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">Rose is laying on their living room rug putting together a particularly difficult puzzle when the rain starts.</p><p class="p1">Finn leaps up from his place on the couch and wrestles with the sash of the nearest window. The paint is old and chipping, and the window doesn’t sit completely square. The late-summer humidity has been enough to warp it further, and it takes both of them to heave it closed.</p><p class="p1">Rey goes on to close the windows in the kitchen and her bedroom, while Finn, grumbling, pulls out his computer.</p><p class="p1">“I thought it wasn’t supposed to storm until tomorrow evening” he says, squinting at the screen. “We’re going to have to wait to go camping if this keeps up, I hate sleeping wet.”</p><p class="p1">“Good” says Rose decidedly from the floor. “I’ll have time to go get real groceries, and we can eat like kings.”</p><p class="p1">Finn laughs and relaxes back on the couch to gaze fondly at her. “You are undeniably the most positive and wonderful person I’ve ever met” he tells her, while Rey pretends to be injured by this.</p><p class="p1">“And you!” he continues, shifting her focus to her “Are the fiercest friend, and the best at opening jars”.</p><p class="p1">They all dissolve into laughter.</p><p class="p1">Suddenly Finn’s face goes slack, staring at the screen. His eyes dart up to meet Rey’s, and there’s something very strange about his expression. Rose hasn’t noticed the rapid change of mood in the room, but Rey stares back at him, waiting.</p><p class="p1">He glances back at his screen, then at her. He seems to be warring with himself, and Rey is about to go over there and wrestle the laptop free when he resolves.</p><p class="p1">“So. The Skywalker Manor sold today.”</p><p class="p1">Rose finally looks up, puzzle piece falling from her distracted hand. Rey had filled her in on the whole Skywalker Manor debacle, and she had been overwhelmingly supportive of Rey even when Finn, steeped in this drama since the early summer, pragmatically pointed out the ways in which she had maybe acted a <em>little</em> overboard. <em>("Peanut, a reminder that you considered breaking a window when you discovered the doors were all locked...")</em></p><p class="p1">“Does it say who bought it?” Rey asks, her voice wooden.</p><p class="p1">“You’ll never believe it” he says, eyes moving rapidly over his screen. “Remember that book series called ‘The Knights’…?”</p><p class="p1">Rey is already breathing like she’s running. She knows exactly where this is going.</p><p class="p1">“Kylo Ren?” she asks sharply.</p><p class="p1">Finn’s brow furrows. “Yeah! Yeah it says here…but there’s literally no information about him anywhere…when you google him it’s just about the books and no other…”</p><p class="p1">“It’s Ben” says Rey, and his name feels strange in her mouth after all these months trying to forget.</p><p class="p1">“Kylo is Ben… Kylo is—wait, what!?”</p><p class="p1">Rey is already on her feet though. “Ben bought the house” she whispers, mostly to herself. “Why would Ben buy the house?”</p><p class="p1">For the second time this year, Rey finds herself standing in her shoes by the door without quite realizing she’s put them on. She looks back at Rose and Finn, both of whom are staring back at her in degrees of surprise.</p><p class="p1">“This is the last time I’m going to try, okay?” she says to them “After this it’s really over. I’ll give up.”</p><p class="p1">They both nod, having the grace to look supportive rather than skeptical.</p><p class="p1">Rey nods too, and reaches around for the door knob behind her, wrenching it open and stumbling out into the hall. She trots down the single flight of stairs, and then she’s out into the blowing storm with not a single plan in her mind.</p><p class="p1">She just knows she has to get to Ben.</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">***</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">She parks on the street and runs up the winding walk. Even through the trees the rain is coming down with enough vigor that she’s pretty much soaked by the time she collides with the front door.</p><p class="p1">She rattles the handle aggressively (locked) and then scurries along under the eave to the big bay window. The living room looks dark and empty so she keeps going, splashing around to the back side of the house.</p><p class="p1">This door is locked too, but she’s pissed now. She bangs (and bangs and bangs) until a light comes on upstairs.</p><p class="p1">“BEN!” She hollers, squinting up into the rain to see if she can make out anything in the room. “BEN!”</p><p class="p1">She’s leaning so hard on the door that when it opens, she falls in, all but going to her knees on the rug.</p><p class="p1">
  <em>“Shit!”</em>
</p><p class="p1">She’s back on her feet in a second and stumbles further into the entryway, turning to face her rescuer in the dark.</p><p class="p1">For a heart-stopping moment, he <em>does</em> look like a monster. He seems to be about 7 feet tall, and whatever he’s wearing hangs loosely off his shoulders, giving him the appearance of a brick wall.</p><p class="p1">Then he turns on the light, and her breath catches.</p><p class="p1">They stare at one another, just like they did in his garden all those months ago.</p><p class="p1">Only this time she looks and feels like she climbed out of a swimming pool, and he’s clearly just gotten out of bed. His hair is mussed and he’s wearing an old and somewhat tattered black Henley.</p><p class="p1">“You didn’t answer my emails” she says conversationally.</p><p class="p1">“No” he says, and he doesn’t even have the common curtesy to look chastened.</p><p class="p2">That's all it takes for Rey to be back in a rage, like she’s been storing up all of the confusion and dejection of the last several months for this very moment.</p><p class="p1">“WELL WHAT THE FUCK!? WHY NOT!?”</p><p class="p1">Ben finally looks away but he doesn’t say anything, and Rey is of half a mind to take him by the shirt and shake him.</p><p class="p1">“I LIKED YOU! I THOUGHT MAYBE— YOU SEEMED LIKE SOMEONE WHO COULD— BUT THEN YOU JUST— YOU!”</p><p class="p1">Rey’s voice catches on an embarrassing choked sob.</p><p class="p1">“Why did you buy the house Ben? I was nearly over you. I stopped wondering what I’d done wrong, I stopped driving over here ‘accidentally’ even though my grocery store is 12 BLOCKS AWAY…and then you went and <em>bought</em> the fucking thing and I can’t possibly ignore the fact that now I will ALWAYS know that you still live here…and you…you just didn’t want to be my—my friend.”</p><p class="p1">She pauses to gasp for breath and wishes he’d left the light off after all, it feels worse being able to see his impassive face.</p><p class="p1">“Please—I just need some closure or something. Ben, please!”</p><p class="p1">He finally meets her eye again, and she unconsciously reaches out a shaking hand between them.</p><p class="p1">“Please…”</p><p class="p1">He does not take her hand</p><p class="p1">But he does finally speak.</p><p class="p1">“You don’t really know me” he says, quiet and serious as if he’s actively modulating himself. “I’m sorry you felt like you did”.</p><p class="p1">Rey lets her hand fall back to her side.</p><p class="p1">He’s right, and she knows it. He knows it too—he’s reaching for the doorknob, ready to turn her back into the night, never to be seen again.</p><p class="p1">Rey stands her ground. She remembers the resolve she felt when she was leaving her apartment half an hour ago. She can’t seem to let this go, so she’ll have to beat it until she’s sure there’s nothing salvageable, because she’ll never forgive herself if she doesn’t. And besides, he hasn’t answered her questions.</p><p class="p1">“You’re right” she starts, balling her hands into fists at her sides but keeping herself calm enough to get it all out. “You haven’t let me know you. But I can read between the lines—I’m a good reader.”</p><p class="p1">“You’re angry and you feel abandoned by the people who are supposed to have loved you. You want to blame all of your problems on them, but then you’re also grown up enough to know that you’re the cause of some of those feelings, and that makes you angrier still. You’ve started to find ways to cope with it all—the writing—but you can’t seem to make it go away entirely and that makes you angry too.”</p><p class="p1">“And you’re lonely.”</p><p class="p1">Ben stares at her.</p><p class="p1">The hand he had been reaching towards the door has frozen on the latch.</p><p class="p1">“Okay” he says at length. “Okay, how did you know all of that?”</p><p class="p1">She can feel the tension go out of her all at once, and she practically slumps forward, stepping toward him so they’re standing only a foot apart.</p><p class="p1">“Ben, it’s <em>me</em>. I was describing the way <em>I</em> feel.”</p><p class="p1">“You—"</p><p class="p1">“Me” she confirms. “Our circumstances are very different, but then again…they aren’t. Didn’t you read my emails? Haven’t you been listening to me all this time? I’ve told you so much…more than almost anyone knows.”</p><p class="p1">There follows a silence so absolute that can’t even begin to guess what’s going to happen next, but he’s not thrown her out into the rain so she’s doing okay.</p><p class="p1">Finally, with something like a sleepwalker’s reverence, Ben’s hand comes up to rest heavily on her shoulder.</p><p class="p1">It feels like benediction.</p><p class="p1">It feels like she’s been on a staticky radio frequency all summer, and someone has finally fiddled the dial to the station and everything snaps into sudden clarity.</p><p class="p1">“Please stop pushing me away” she whispers.</p><p class="p1">“I’m—I don’t really know how to do anything else” he admits. “I seem to hurt everyone I interact with, so I stopped interacting with people. But then you burst in here all bright and cheerful with your loud music and your conversation…” He draws in a deep breath.</p><p class="p1">“And I just…liked you. I considered coming down to meet you properly, I tried to watch you from the window when you came and went. I thought about leaving you notes in the books and giving them back to you…I thought about throwing caution to the wind and ignoring the face that I’m in hiding so I could—I dunno—take you on a date or…or something.</p><p class="p1">He's been looking at a point just passed her ear this whole time, but he finally turns his eyes to meet hers for the last part.</p><p class="p1">"And then just when I was feeling like I might have myself under control—like I might be human enough...you were done cleaning. And then you miraculously came to see me again and everything was going so well but I lost control and told you all of those things that no one should have to know…”</p><p class="p1">The other hand comes up to rest on her bicep.</p><p class="p1">“Rey I bought the house because I just needed to do one right thing, and keeping the house in this family was it…and because even though I turned you away I couldn’t stop thinking about you. And this was the only place you would be able to find me.”</p><p class="p1">For a moment there is complete silence. Rey stares at him, he stares at her.</p><p class="p1">And then Rey surges up on her toes to kiss him in a single, graceless arc.</p><p class="p1">“I found you” she gasps against his lips when they break apart. “I found you, just don’t turn me away again.”</p><p class="p1">He answers by drawing her in, growling hungrily as he hugs her close, as the hand on her shoulder sinks into the hair at the back of her neck.</p><p class="p1">For a moment it’s a very disney-esque mash of lips, noses slightly squished. Then Rey opens her mouth to gasp in a breath, and Ben adjusts his hold on her, tilts his head, deepens the kiss. Rey gasps for a completely different reason.</p><p class="p1">He is so warm and solid, especially against her soaked and chilled clothing. Every single place his hands touch her—reverently at first, and then with more purpose and desperation—feels like it’s been lit on fire.</p><p class="p1">She can’t seem to do anything but ball her hands in the soft shirt he’s wearing, but she’s doing an exemplary job of that. Already she’s stretched the collar down a bit to reveal more creamy, mole-strewn skin, and she almost pauses to marvel at it, but he’s stepping into her now and her back makes contact with the wall before she can do more than moan against his lips.</p><p class="p1">What sinful lips—<em>Jesus</em>. They are so soft and warm, slick and trembling against hers. They are sliding to the corner of her mouth, kissing just below her eye, sucking her earlobe into his mouth…</p><p class="p1">“I’ve been thinking about this, too” he growls in her ear. “From the moment I saw you…”</p><p class="p1">Rey shudders against him, pressing her breasts against his chest and kind of clawing at his silken hair.</p><p class="p1">“Come here” she demands, getting her arms around his shoulders so that she can hoist herself into his arms. “Come here, come closer!”</p><p class="p1">Impractical as the request is, he does seem to get closer, hands squeezing her sides and rump while his mouth works at her neck.</p><p class="p1">She’s making a strange keening noise and grinding against his stomach instinctively when he abruptly straightens up and hauls her fully into his arms. He carries her blindly into the living room, and she thinks he might be aiming for the couch but they topple to the ground in the middle of the hearth rug, in front of the cold fireplace.</p><p class="p1">“Oh!” she cries in surprise as her back makes contact with the carpet. Then “Oh!” in a much lower and more wanton moan when he lowers himself to cover her, backlit in the flashing lightening and thrashing trees through the bay window.</p><p class="p1">He returns to the junction of her neck and shoulder, sucking bruises into the tender flesh and pausing only to tip his chin up and kiss her in the most open-mouthed and filthy way she’s ever experienced.</p><p class="p1">She’s all kinds of wet beneath him as his hard body starts to move over her. Her nipples are straining against her t-shirt, nearly overstimulated by the tug of wet cloth over them as Ben’s bodypulls the shirt taught against them again and again. </p><p class="p1">And then there’s his erection—obvious and enormous. It had been pressing against her stomach when they were standing but in this position it lays heavy and hot against her clit. She eagerly lets her legs fall open for him, shivering in delight as he moans against her. His hips stutter for a moment, and then he’s sinking even closer, thrusting against her with real purpose. The running shorts she has on—soaked from the rain—are quickly soaked from her desire, too, and the whole effect has them pulling up tight against her wanting body with every motion Ben makes.</p><p class="p1">It feels <em>incredible</em>.</p><p class="p1">She blindly kicks her shoes off so that she can get her legs around him properly, and feels rather than sees his hands ball into fists bracketing her head on the thick carpet. His body arches obscenely as he continues to thrust against her, grunting with the effort and his own arousal.</p><p class="p1">Fleetingly she’s glad that she cleaned this carpet.</p><p class="p1">Then Ben starts to make half-words and sounds, and she’s completely distracted from everything but the feeling of his body moving against hers, his lips making sloppy wet lines against her skin.</p><p class="p1">“Fuck” he’s grunting over and over “you’re so good, you’re so small I could just suck you into my—oh god—god Rey you are—hnnnng!”</p><p class="p1">Rey digs her heels into his haunches to spur him on, and lets out a strangled cry of her own. She seems to be chanting his name, punctuating the single syllable with each forceful motion of his body. She’s pressing back against him so hard that she can hardly breath, and the motion of their rocking has scooted them nearly a foot across the floor.</p><p class="p1">At long last his body catches her shorts just so, and the pull of fabric combined with the weight and pressure from him tips her over the edge.</p><p class="p1">She lets out a completely unholy sound, a yell that could be words but isn’t, and buries her face in his sweaty hair as she comes against him in shuddering, pulsing waves.</p><p class="p1">His breath hitches in her ear a moment later, and she can nearly feel his dick twitching against her through both layers of their clothing as he comes in three forceful gasping thrusts of his hips.</p><p class="p1">Sense is slow to return, and when it does, Rey is almost surprised to find herself unchanged. It feels like some sort of transformative magic has happened here, and the steady beating of the rain and slowing bump of her heart against Ben’s seem too everyday for what she feels welling up inside of her.</p><p class="p1">All of that is soon overshadowed by the fact that she can’t breath, though.</p><p class="p1">Now that Ben isn’t propping himself against her his weight is nearly crushing her to the floor. The rug, sinfully soft, can’t quite stop her from feeling the hard wood beneath it, and her wet clothing is cooling with her skin, and becoming uncomfortable.</p><p class="p1">“Ben” she says softly, pushing at his shoulder. “Ben”.</p><p class="p1">She’s almost convinced he’s fallen to sleep on top of her but he turns out to just be as dazed as she was, and he raises his head to meet her eyes in the gray gloom.</p><p class="p1">He rolls halfway off of her then, and grimaces, readjusting himself a little bit.</p><p class="p1">“Huh.” he throws her a wry smile. “I haven’t don’t that since the 7th grade.”</p><p class="p1">“Dry humped someone?”</p><p class="p1">“Come in my pants.”</p><p class="p1">Rey covers her eyes with her hands. “Oh my god” she laughs, “This is not what I expected at all—I mean—I’m not upset!” She pulls her hands away to look at him. “It’s wonderful. I just—I was so sure that you didn’t feel what I felt.”</p><p class="p1">“But I do” he murmurs, letting a large warm hand come to rest on her face where he brushes some loose hair away from her eyes.</p><p class="p1">“You’re right about me” he continues. “You’re right about pretty much everything—quit preening—so I really appreciate your persistence. And I’m sorry I never responded to your emails. I read them all the time…I tried to convince myself that letting you go was the right thing to do.”</p><p class="p1">“It’s never right to be alone” she whispers. “You can’t grow to be better without learning from other people.”</p><p class="p1">He looks so transfixed by this information that she’s worried she’s broken him. Finally he shakes his head and gives a little smile. “I think I’m finally getting that.”</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p2">***</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">They laze there on the carpet for a bit and exchange lazy kisses, but eventually Ben disappears upstairs to get them dry clothes while Rey lays on the floor, staring at the ceiling and thinking blissfully of nothing at all.</p><p class="p1">Ben returns with some old-looking track shorts on, and holds out a neatly folded pile of dark sweats for her. He busies himself with making a fire in the cold grate while Rey watches and amicably asks him questions about growing up here ('Did you always have fires?' 'Only at Christmas.' 'And what did your friends think when you invited them over to hang out?' 'I didn’t really have a lot of friends, and generally I went to their houses—my parents horrified me.')</p><p class="p1">Ben finally rocks back on his heels, a fire crackling merrily away in front of him.</p><p class="p1">He turns to face her again and pauses in surprise when he realizes she’s just sitting there in her wet clothes, sweats held loosely in her lap.</p><p class="p1">He scoots closer to her—rather awkwardly because all of his limbs are so long—and rests a hand experimentally on her elbow before leaning in for a long, slow kiss.</p><p class="p1">She melts against him, letting her chest press against his arm, and after a moment she carefully feels along his chest and down his stomach (the muscles ripple pleasingly under her hand) until she finds the hem of his shirt. She tugs this up gently…and then less gently when he doesn’t seem to realize what she’s trying to do, so focused on her lips.</p><p class="p1">Finally he pulls back a little in surprise, and she gets his shirt the rest of the way over his arms and head.</p><p class="p1">
  <em>Holy shit.</em>
</p><p class="p1">“Holy shit.” He follows her gaze down to his abs with a bemused sort of look on her face. “So….you write books and work out?”</p><p class="p1">“Pretty much” he says.</p><p class="p1">“If I’d known all of this was here, I would have broken into your room on the first day” she proclaims, and is rewarded with his husky laugh.</p><p class="p1">He responds in kind, rolling her shirt up her body and gently working it over her hair. For a fleeting moment she realizes that her hair—wet from the rain and irreversibly mussed by their tussle on the carpet must look ridiculous.</p><p class="p1">But she forgets that in short order when he skims a warm, large hand around the span of her ribcage, right below the band of her sports bra.</p><p class="p1">He looks once at her eyes, checking, and then his hand repeats the motion, this time inside of the band of her bra.</p><p class="p1">The catch in her breathing encourages him further, and he inches the elastic fabric up and up until he’s detangled her arms from it, and tossed it on top of her shirt.</p><p class="p1">There follows a beautiful moment where they stare at one another in the firelight. The way the the flames cast dancing shadows and highlights across his heavily toned body reminds her of classical artwork. She feels like she could write a symphony about his pectorals alone.</p><p class="p1">Rey lays back down on the rug, reveling in the softness against her bare and chilled back and in the hungry and transfixed look on Ben’s face.</p><p class="p1">Very lightly, carefully, he brings his hand to rest on her ankle, and looks up the length of her like he has all the time in the world.</p><p class="p1">Rey, it turns out, does not have all the time in the world. She lets him look for less then a minute before she shamelessly lifts her hips off the rug in a silent entreaty.</p><p class="p1">The way Ben’s eyes darken is going to be her favorite thing of the decade, she thinks, and bites her lip to suppress the groan of satisfaction when he skims his hands up the length of her legs and hooks them in the waist of her shorts.</p><p class="p1">They come off easily, together with her underwear, and then it’s done. She doesn't feel an ounce of self-consciousness laying there under his adoring gaze.</p><p class="p1">He scoots even closer, so that he’s sitting with his hip tucked against hers, and willingly pulls off his own shorts when she tugs them expectantly.</p><p class="p1">His penis, when it springs free, is not all the way hard yet, but it’s already quite impressive, and she bites her lip in anticipation. He’s incredibly pale, and next to her own skin, darkened from a summer outdoors, she could almost believe he <em>is</em> a ghost. But his hands are SO incredibly warm, and he’s using them to trace up over her pubic bone, over her hip, and up to tweak her nipple slightly.</p><p class="p1">“Mmm” she says coherently.</p><p class="p1">He traces the line again, and then repeats his motion on the other side of her body. And then trails his hands over both breasts, and then through her hair, and then leans down to kiss the corner of her mouth once.</p><p class="p1">The pressure is building inside of Rey again, and she is unconsciously pressing her legs together to seek the friction she desires.</p><p class="p1">Ben is not hurrying at all, though, and Rey manages to lay under his wonderful and maddening ministrations for another several minutes before she rises up and presses him back onto the carpet, scrambling up to straddle his hips and press her very wet center to his erection.</p><p class="p1">His head lolls to the side on and his hand covers his face as he groans and arches up into her, growing harder still as she wetly and artlessly kisses his chest and neck, raking her fingernails across his hips.</p><p class="p1">Within minutes he’s bucking up against her, and she allows herself the extreme pleasure of sliding her wet and aching cunt along his dick in slow, methodical strokes, each one topping up against the slick head.</p><p class="p1">Finally on a backslide she lets herself slip onto him, and revels in the way his hands, holding her hips firmly, tighten on a choked in breath.</p><p class="p1">“Rey” he groans as she rocks again, taking another inch of him as she presses back. “Reeey, god”.</p><p class="p1">She works herself onto him a bit at a time, reveling in the stretch and pulsing warmth of it all. His hands run up and down her back urgently, and his feet seem to be kind of scrambling on the carpet behind her, but he doesn’t press her any faster, and patiently allows her to take him in without arching up to meet her.</p><p class="p1">When she’s fully seated, his thighs and balls pressed tantalizing against her butt, she levers herself up to sitting with her hands on his chest and looks down at him.</p><p class="p1">“Now” she says authoritatively. “You’re always going to answer my emails from here on out.”</p><p class="p1">“Yes” he replies immediately, eyes overbright.</p><p class="p1">“And you’re going to start using the rest of the house like a normal person, and hang out with me here when I come over.”</p><p class="p1">“Okay” he agrees.</p><p class="p1">“And you’re going to give me your number and reply to my texts and come over to dinner whenever Finn makes something delicious.”</p><p class="p1">“I—I don’t have a phone. But I will come eat, as long as you forgive me for being a little slow to socialize.”</p><p class="p1">“I’ll forgive you” she says, and it’s bigger than just this conversation. He seems to understand that too, and his hands are back on her, rubbing distracting circles into her thighs and hips.</p><p class="p1">“Thank you” he whispers, and nods solemnly at her.</p><p class="p1">Rey nods back, and then she’s rearing back to slam onto him, taking him in short harsh jerks.</p><p class="p1">He <em>yells</em> and his hands scrabble over her, hips stuttering up to meet her punishing pace.</p><p class="p1">It doesn’t take long at all, the way she’s angled over him and his dick keeps hitting the place inside of her that makes her see stars. She comes unraveled above him, and rides out the aftershocks as he murmurs encouragements.</p><p class="p1">When they shift, he holds her like a spoon, facing the fire, and presses deeply into her. His hand comes to cup her firmly—not really moving, just providing pressure and a little friction as he holds her tightly and continues to thrust forward in thorough strokes. She comes again finally, and almost desperately against his hand when he begins to shudder, and he follows, rolling to press her into the carpet face-down with the last few rolls of his hips.</p><p class="p1">They lay there gasping for breath for a bit before detangling this time, and Rey rolls bonelessly onto her side next to him, throwing a leg over his hip.</p><p class="p1">“Good” she says sleepily. “We’ll have to do that a couple more times, okay?”</p><p class="p1">“Oh, alright” he replies lightly, running his fingers up and down the column of her throat, “I’d like that”.</p><p class="p1">They grin at each other in the dying firelight and cuddle closer. The orange cat saunters into the room and sniffs them before curling up at their feet.</p><p class="p1">Right before Rey falls asleep she is fleetingly aware of Ben’s fingers lacing into her own, and the faint sensation of him tracing the smooth taught skin of the scar where a rose stem once caught her thumb.</p><p class="p1">It’s healed over now.</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">***</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">“Well.”</p><p class="p1">Rey lets the apartment door close behind her and wiggles out of her shoes. Rose is sitting on the couch with a book, and her eyes widen comically at the stack of books Rey is holding against her own chest.</p><p class="p1">“Where did you get—wait—are you just getting home NOW?”</p><p class="p1">Finn comes hurrying into the room from the kitchen and gawks at her, standing there in the entryway in Ben’s oversized sweatpants.</p><p class="p1">“Well.” she repeats, warming to her captive audience. Rose and Finn exchange a look at then stare at her impatiently.</p><p class="p1">“Well I think you guys are going to be able to see the roses at Skywalker Manor after all. My boyfriend owns it.”</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p2"> </p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>For my "no thanks on the explicit content" readers: </p><p>Rey and Ben have sex in front of the fireplace consensually and enjoyably. They talk a little bit too, and Rey gets Ben to promise that he'll always respond to her emails from now on out, use the whole house "like a normal person", invite her over often, and hang out with her, Finn and Rose. He, of course, agrees. </p><p> </p><p>***</p><p> </p><p>Thank you for reading! Please leave a comment or lavish me with Kudos! I appreciate it! Happy Valentine's Day!</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
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